An excerpt from a well-written (and entertaining as always), post-patch rant:

I can’t live with that UI. I can’t. I won’t.

I get that Blizz didn’t like the cheese automagic decursing. I get that this was a bit of a rush and jamming partial beta code into a live game is … problematic. What I don’t get is why Blizzard is not pandering to a vibrant, open-source addon developer community when they have to know their default UI is shit. And publishing partial notes of planned changes is not pandering — that’s half assing. Pandering is something like this: We (Blizz) need you (the addon dev community) to have your stuff ready to go on patch day. How can we (Blizz) help you (the addon dev community) do that? Also, thank you (the addon dev community) for fixing our shit UI, you (the addon dev community) really make our game a pleasure.

I know, that’s all too much to ask and unreasonable.

Hey, I’m flexible. I use a handful of addons, but all I really need is a raid addon and boss warnings. That’s my line in the sand. I’m not scanning their shit combat log for boss cast warnings and counting down in my head when BossSpell will hit. I’m not guessing who has boss aggro and asking in Ventrilo 78 times, “who’s he on now?” “how bout now?” “is it a warlock?” “a mage pet, wtf?” I won’t have 1/6 of my view taken up with raid groups (and I play at 1680 x 1050, there’s only so much squeeze room) and I don’t want half of my healers taking a month-long hiatus because the target/spam heal routine isn’t so much a bore as a Chore.

(And really, why does decursing have to be a pain in the ass to fit some game vision? I do not, cannot understand that, but their game, their rules — not like decursing is my gig anyways, but I sure as hell hear the bitching about it.)

I repeat: fuck raiding. I’m going to farm flowers with my herbalist.

Am I the only one to see this as a game design issue?

I underline how Foton repeats that WoW’s vanilla UI is shit. But is it really shit?

I remember clearly that when I logged in WoW for the first time during beta not only I was amazed by the environment, but also by how well designed, effective and simple to use the UI was. And I wasn’t the only one to notice that as WoW’s (vanilla) UI is easily recognized as the very best one in the market by a WIDE margin.

So, there’s something that clearly is wrong in this point of view. But, even more interesting, this part that is “wrong” also corresponds to a recurring problem that should hint to something bigger and deeper.

Am I the only one that while reading Foton thinks, “man, this raiding game really does suck”. Because it’s not a coincidence that all the problems Foton is reporting are pertinent to the raiding game.

I’ll say what is my opinion: WoW’s vanilla UI becomes BROKEN when you reach the endgame.

That’s the point. I see an identity between the first “block” of the game and the virtues of the UI. The level 1-59 experience is the part of the game that was praised everywhere and that made this game successful (or at the very least gave the initial impulse). Through this first block the UI does its work rather well, in the same way every other aspect of game design is well thought. This is the nearly “flawless” experience. Then things change. The endgame, as many have admitted, feels as a totally different experience. And, again as many have admitted, not nearly as flawless as the first block. It’s in this other part that most of the problems and limits of the UI start to arise and the user mods become a *necessity*.

UI mods are always useful, but while for the first block of the game they are either an “ease” or a “preference”, with the endgame they become *mandatory*. If you don’t have CTRaid (and Ventilo) you aren’t even allowed to join a raid.

This means that the real problem isn’t the UI. The UI is only the most superficial and visible layer. But the problem runs deeper. The UI is a simple manifestation.

This is obviously a problem of game design, and a widespread problem that is pertinent not just to the UI but to this whole second block of the game that we call “endgame” and that Blizzard wasn’t able to understand, interpret and polish as the rest.

We’ll see if with TBC the designers will steer the game away from those problems, or if those problems aren’t seen even as problems and are still part of WoW’s goals.

And, in either case, if we’ll have to wait Blizzard to figure out and polish even this part, or if another game company, for once, will be longsighted enough to anticipate the trends and do a better work. At least on this front.